A FOREST POLICY FOR LOUISIANA 507 



land in Louisiana being included in this region east of the Mississippi 

 River and along the State line. 



Alluvial Region. — So far as the composition of the soil goes, no 

 richer lands than those of this region exist in America. Hundreds of 

 thousands of acres of "front lands," or natural levees, bordering the 

 rivers, being higher than the "back lands" more remote from the chan- 

 nels, are above ordinary high-water level, and have been further pro- 

 tected against the worst floods by artificial levees. The back lands, 

 however, are overflowed a few times every ordinary year by the back- 

 ing up of water from the larger rivers into the maze of anastomosing 

 tributary bayous that drain the region and whose currents run some- 

 times one way, sometimes the other. To drain them and to levee or 

 dam the outlets of the smaller streams as a protection against back 

 water is a very expensive process, and except for certain occasional 

 units of rather higher land the back lands as a whole can hardly be 

 reclaimed by any other agency than the State or Federal Government. 

 The ownership, as a rule, is badly scattered. Some of the deep swamps 

 along portions of the Red, Ouachita, and Atchafalaya rivers, still with- 

 out artificial levees, overflow to a depth of 12 or 15 feet, which indicates 

 the extent of the drainage problem. 



ShorNeaf-pine Region. — Cultivation has been attempted of a good 

 many areas in this region which are non-agricultural because of broken 

 topography and which erode seriously in spite of terracing and contour 

 plowing. The lo per cent of non-agricultural land is largely of this 

 character, and a much larger per cent ought not, it would seem, to be 

 farmed in advance of the much richer soils of the blufif, prairie, and 

 .alluvial regions. The productive power of the average soil is the sec- 

 ond low'est in any of the six regions. The non-agricultural land is 

 pretty well scattered through the better land in small units, although 

 some extensive areas occur without any admixture of better soils. 



Longleaf-pine Region. — In spite of the fact that this region has, on 

 the average, the poorest soils of the State, and but 7 per cent is now 

 farmed, it is significant that only about 25 per cent of its area is esti- 

 mated to be true forest soil. Some of the longleaf-pine hills have very 

 abrupt slopes, especially where the breakofifs into the main streams 

 occur, and these are non-agricultural. Again, certain areas of peculiar 

 distribution, but of fair size, have deep sandy soils, underlaid only at 

 depths of 18 inches to several feet by an impervious subsoil. Here a 

 condition of physiological aridity, so far as ordinary shallow-rooting 

 crops go, is in nowise a bar to fair growth by the deep-rooted longleaf 

 -pine. Aside from these broken areas and those of deep sand, both true 



